Everything Every Barbie All At Once
A Review of The Barbie Movie
GRADE: C-
************SPOILERS***************
The Barbenheimer Craze has finally coming to a head, hopefully I’ll never have to see another forced meme related to either of these properties ever again. I find it extremely funny how obvious the movie theater propaganda is here. Every celebrity interview I’ve seen suggests going to see the film at two separate theaters or even two separate days, which is clear way to prevent people from sneaking into screenings. Even the most seemingly organic “Barbenheimer Schedules” suggest this. Here’s one for example:
The Barbie Movie, for those of you living under a rock, is a new MOVIE (not a film) written and directed by Greta Gerwig. Gerwig first broke into the mainstream with her role in the post-college coming-of-age story Frances Ha, directed by her husband Noah Baumbach. In 2018, she directed her first feature film Lady Bird, one that I think unfairly gets called overrated. Like Frances Ha, I found it to be a unique and refreshing tale of a young girl trying to get her shit together before being swallowed whole by the responsibilities of the real world. Her second film, Little Women, felt to me like a step in the wrong direction. Someone talented and singular like her should’ve gone the Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson route, writing and directing original scripts that explore similar themes with different characters, time periods, etc. Instead, she directed Oscar bait that no one in 2023 talks about. Regardless, it was critically-acclaimed and tasteful, so it wasn’t too late to turn back. It wasn’t like Heaven’s Gate or some shit like that.
However, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
And thus, we get, The Barbie Movie. Here’s what I will say up top. This is a fun movie. This is probably, with some critiques that I’m going to give, the best this movie could’ve possibly turned out. It could’ve been this.
Barbie is not that deep, you know? It’s just a doll that 10-year-olds used to play with until they moved on to butter noodles and juice-covered iPads that show them video of Elsa giving birth to Spider-Man’s child. The intention of the film is to create a visually creative theme park attraction for 15-40 year olds, mostly women, that also serves as commentary on the patriarchal structure of society. It has a bit of everything for everybody. Colorful set design and imaginary thinking for the little kids, Ice Spice and angst for teens, Twitter humor for girls my age, Ryan Gosling and Margo Robbie for…everyone. They are probably the best part of the movie to be quite honest. People that will enjoy this film most will be girls in their early to mid 20s who have recently graduated college with a creative degree of some kind. It definitely panders, knowingly so, by including people like Issa Rae, America Ferrera and Hari Nef in the cast, children do not know who the fuck these people are, you know? The humor reminded me more of Sex and The City than it did Minions. From a marketing perspective this is a home run, and the box office gains proved that for sure.
But notice how I have not even touched on the plot yet? That’s because like the titular character, this film is a product from start to finish. Even before stepping into the theater, I had already watched the first 15 minutes without even trying to do that. The 2001: Space Odyssey referencing scene was in the trailer, the establishing shots (also from the trailer) showed me how Barbie started her day, I’ve already seen the “Beach Off” scene 100 times in different memes, etc. It really lays out a story that appeals to an older person, but holds your hand the whole time. It sort of crushes any reason to see it again no matter how old you are.
Ok, now I’m at the plot. It’s very meta. Barbie is created in 1959, replacing the baby doll as every girl’s best friend. Women get to be mother instead of playing mother, and this shatters the glass ceiling, or so the Barbies think. There is the real world, and there is Barbie Land. For the first 20 minutes or so, we are shown this toy world where everything is perfect. It’s this basically. While definitely copying from The Lego Movie, it is successful in establishing the world and it’s logistics. There are a bunch of iterations of Barbies that are the stars and rulers of the land, everyone gets along and is friends. The Kens have no power and spend all day simping over their Barbies. This was one of the more fun parts of the movie for me, really drawing from how children play with dolls. Barbie floats from her bed to her car, Ken is flown into the air by a plastic wave, it’s a romp and goof that only this property and like G.I. Joe could fuck around with. The central plot revolves around Barbie having “flat feet”, an unheard of medical condition in Barbie Land.
To solve this issue, she is sent to Kate McKinnon’s character “Weird Barbie”, maybe her best ever role. From there she is sent to the real world where she must confront her owner and she goes to Mattel HQ and gets in a genuinely silly and well choreographed running chase scene with the CEO Will Ferrell. (All the scenes with Will Ferrell and the board of directors is very well done in my opinion, he reminded me of Mugatu and also of his CEO character in The Lego Movie. Damn this movie really copies The Lego Movie a lot lol.)
The very best part of the movie for me at least is the second act, where Ken goes into the real world and discovers that dudes rock. He then brings “The Patriarchy” back to Barbie Land and turns it into Kendom. This is supposed to be like the villain heel turn, but I could not stop cheering him on. He created this gay little world for himself that worshipped cars he didn’t know how to drive, horses and beer. It was like an AI chatbot created by Nathan Fielder trying to approximate the average bro dude. The genuine sincerity that Gosling employs as Ken absolutely steals the show at this portion and throughout, especially at the peak of his performance, “I’m Just Ken”, which he deserves an Oscar and a Grammy for. Aside from Drive I think this will go down as the essential Gosling performance. Can you tell that this review was written by a man who's opinions on girly shit you shouldn’t listen to?
This is also the portion of the movie where Margot Robbie’s Barbie meets her original owner, America Ferrera, who’s dialogue made me want to die. Real line from the film, upon seeing the horse and car infested version of Barbie Land, with all the brainwashed Barbies there serving the men, “this is what they did in the 1600s to the Native population with small pox, they had no choice.” I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about lady? One of the most baffling lines of dialogue in any major motion picture I’ve ever seen. A key plot device is Ferrera lecturing the brainwashed Kendom Barbies on what it’s like to be a woman. It’s all just so on the nose, saccharine and too little, too late. A speech like this would’ve sounded cliche at the 2016 Women’s March. It felt like Gerwig really understands gender and societal pressures in act 1, but totally loses touch by act 3. It feels bad to see your director literally lose the plot halfway through the film, it doesn’t bode well for the thesis overall.
Barbie just tries to do way too much shit in two hours, and it tries so desperately to be aware of itself in the process. It wastes too much time talking directly to the audience instead of creating tension or stakes. There’s too many characters, too many genres, too many Hasan Piker pander rants, too many shitty original songs. It wants to be Rick and Morty but it also wants to be Everything Everywhere All At Once but it’s The Lego Movie and it shows The Godfather in the film and it copies SpongeBob Fish Out of Water, and it does Family Guy-style cutaways but it’s sincere and it’s Lady Bird but it’s a giant commercial but that’s the joke but it takes the joke too far by just being what it sets out to critique. Too much fucking shit happening at once and not enough fun with the world that it builds out. Why create Barbie Land and limit it to one town? Why have John Cena and Michael Cera in the movie for 2 seconds? Why have this Simu Liu Ken that is opposed to Ryan Gosling Ken but create no true conflict between them? Just a dance number that resolves everything, that’ll fix it all.
I’d also like to just add before I end this that I think Robbie was a great choice to play the stereotypical Barbie. I cannot think of any actress that would physically embody that role better than she could’ve, and I really think Gerwig made her a complex character. I just wish she would’ve more fully followed through on her complexities and her existential crisis. Her arc just kind of ends with her being brought into the real world for no good reason. I really liked that she wants more for herself than what the original Barbie Land offered, but with all this newfound outside knowledge, she really could’ve changed it for the better and made it a nice place for Barbie and Ken to live in harmony. Like why not use that as an excuse to show what a more balanced world could be like, as they did in Monsters Inc. It’s not a scaring factory anymore, it’s a laugh factory! The characters in that movie all grew and adjusted their world to their newfound knowledge. It just feels like a missed opportunity to make the biggest misogynist character the most interesting, sympathetic and cool one, when it’s supposed be Barbie’s movie. But whatever.
Idk this movie was just kind of a disappointment that felt a little too overstuffed and preachy for its own good. Gosling carried. The end. I drive.